


wholehearted

by trippingtozier



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: :), F/M, Minor Angst, One Shot, just a super quick read, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28233414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trippingtozier/pseuds/trippingtozier
Summary: 5 times Spencer Reid held his totally (not) platonic feelings in, and the 1 time he finally let everything come to the surface
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Reader, Spencer Reid/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 97





	wholehearted

1.

She’s been crying. He pretends like he doesn’t notice the way her eyes are rimmed in red. Or the way she chokes on the thickness in the back of her throat when she’s trying to deliver the case report. Or the tracks through her foundation. 

He tries not to wonder what could’ve happened this time. Maybe she’s just having a bad day. Maybe she had another nightmare, another sleepless night. Maybe something happened to her cat. There are all sorts of reasons she could be crying, and strangely enough, the thought breaks his heart. 

“Hey,” he grabs onto her wrist, holding her back as everyone else exits the room where the case was delivered. She feels tragically frail in his hands, like he could shatter her just from squeezing too hard. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She bites her lip and closes her eyes, breathing in deeply. “No.”

“Okay,” he says, letting it drop, eyes never leaving her face. 

2\. 

“I’m right, aren’t I? Like, Morgan is definitely in the wrong here. I won fair and square. You know what I mean?”

“You’re absolutely right,” he agrees, even though he doesn’t have a clue what she’s been ranting about. She lost him somewhere between Taylor Swift and not knowing how to work her new phone. 

“He’s so _ugh_.”

“Yeah,” he says, scooting his chair just a little closer to hers. She’s sitting next to his desk, arms crossed tightly and she’s got that ridiculously adorable pout adorning her features. She’s always been cute when she’s angry, but he doesn’t think she’d like it much if he said so. God forbid her wrath of terror is turned on him. 

“Sometimes I wish I could kick him in the nuts without it getting me a workplace hostility warning from Hotch, you know?” She bites on her lip, thinking about her own statement. “God, I’m awful sometimes.”

He laughs quietly. 

“I wouldn’t say you’re awful. I believe you’re just... is there a more eloquent way to say ‘sore loser’?”

She rolls her eyes, leaning over to kick at his shin. He puts his arms up in a way of surrender and scoots backwards, out of reach. In response, he gets an irritated sigh. 

“I won,” she repeats. “Fair and square.”

“Okay,” he responds. “Whatever you need to tell yourself to get to sleep at night.”

She snorts and immediately covers her face with her hand, embarrassed. It’s unladylike, and loud, but it’s just so _her_. It’s perfect.

3.

There are a lot of things Spencer would like to do before he dies. 

Publish a textbook, construct a house, beat the claw machine at the arcade. See his mother happy again. 

“Climb Mount Everest.”

He blinks at the voice that disrupts his thoughts, looking up to see her sliding a plate with pizza in front of him. She looks like an angel, even in his harsh kitchen lighting. He thinks maybe he can make out the tip of her wings if he squints. 

“What was that?”

“You were listing off things you’d like to do before you die,” she says, taking a bite of her own piece of pizza. “I was contributing.”

“I can’t say that’s on the top of my list,” he replies. “I’ve got one bad knee and a strong dislike of the cold.”

“Wait,” she smiles mischievously. “Let me guess again.”

“Go for it.”

“You want to adopt a dog and name it Pavlov.”

“How’d you know?”

“I can read your mind.” She wiggles her eyebrows at him suggestively.

“Oh, really?”

She nods.

“What am I thinking about right now, then?”

She sits back in her chair, crossing her arms and tilting her head at him. She purses her lips, and hums in concentration. He can’t tell where she’s going with this. 

“You’re thinking…” She leans forward, taking his hand in hers and looking down at the palm. “That you want to let me pick the movie tonight, and every night thereafter.”

It’s not what he was thinking, not at all, but in this moment he’d agree with whatever she said. 

“I wouldn’t go as far as every night, but tonight, go for it.”

“Oh, Spencer,” she giggles. “You’re going to hate what I have in our watch list.”

“Mockumentary?”

“Nope,” she answers, popping the ‘p’. 

He makes a show of groaning, and he takes his hand from her.

“If you play another romantic comedy I’m abandoning ship.”

“You would never.”

_She’s_ _right_ , he thinks. 

4.

“Have you ever thought about having sex with me?” She asks one night, when she’s laying next to him in his bedroom after an evening of bar-hopping with Prentiss. He completely forgets whatever he’d been running over in his mind. 

“No,” he lies. “How come?”

The bed creaks as she turns to prop herself up on an elbow, looking over at him. He’s afraid to make eye-contact.

“Emily says girls and guys can’t be ‘just-friends’ without fucking at least once.”

“Oh,” he says. “Maybe we’re the exception.”

Her lips press together, and it’s a face she’s made before, usually when she doesn’t believe a lie an unsub is telling. He wonders if she’s caught his bluff, but that’s ridiculous. She’s just drunk. 

“Are you sure you’ve never thought about it? Not once?”

He feels small and stupid under her gaze. Like a little boy getting caught with his hand in his pants. 

“Maybe once.”

She stares at him. He can’t tell what she’s thinking, and his palms are getting sweaty.

“Was it good?” She asks, sounding genuinely fascinated. 

He can’t think.

“Um,” he shrugs. “It was awkward.”

“Huh.” She rolls off of her side so he can’t see her face hovering above his anymore. After a few minutes she says, “I’ve thought about it.”

He never would have guessed. 

He wants to tell her she’s not missing much, but he’s still in a silent stupor from her admission, so he doesn’t say anything.

“Do you think we’d be good together?”

He smothers a groan. This is absolutely not the conversation he wanted to have at three in the morning. Especially when she probably wouldn’t remember it after waking up. But maybe that’s for the best. 

He settles on saying, “I can’t imagine we’d be bad together.”

“Cool.”

5.

“Shit, Spence. Did you fall asleep with a candle burning?” He hears her rustle around him, and blinks blearily at her as she leans over his coffee table to scrape at the hardened wax. “For a genius, you’re pretty stupid sometimes.”

He yawns, then rubs at his eyes. She comes to sit beside him on his uncomfortably hard couch. How he managed to fall asleep on it, he doesn’t know. 

“I haven’t been able to sleep much.” He’s been too busy thinking about his mother, and her, and how things could have gone differently in the previous case. 

God, his brain is so tired.

“That brain of yours could be considered a weapon,” she mutters. 

“Don’t I know it,” he says, and she sighs. She drops her head onto his shoulder, and he lets out a deep breath. His shadows hide when she’s around. The days seem a little less dreary. It’s incredible, really, how she’s managed to square herself away in a corner of his heart. 

The sunlight pours in from his casement windows, creating a halo upon her. It makes him think of Abbott Handerson Thayer’s Winged Figure painting. An angel, captured in a frame for all eternity. 

There he goes again, comparing her to angels.

“Earth to Spencer.” He turns his head to frown down at her, whose head is still resting on his shoulder. “I can hear you thinking. It’s annoying. The slosh of your brain as the gears turn.”

“That’s horrifying,” he answers. 

“What were you thinking about?”

“Angels.”

“Biblical angels?” She asks. “Those freaks are terrifying. ‘Be not afraid’, my ass.”

He chuckles. 

“No. Renaissance angels.”

“Oh.” This time it’s her turn to yawn. “They’re pretty, aren’t they?”

“Some of them.”

“Was the one you’re thinking about pretty?”

He rests his head atop hers, relishing in her warmth. “Absolutely stunning.”

+1.

“What were you _thinking_ ?” He shouts, taking her by her shoulders and shaking her. He feels nothing but pure, raw, unadulterated anger course through his veins. It’s making him sick. “He could have killed you! He could have evaded us once again and taken you god only knows where! God, do you have _any_ idea how horrible that could have ended? Did you even stop to think about how it could have affected everyone else?” He drops her shoulders, turning on his heel to shout at the wall. It’s better this way, honestly, not seeing her face. If he sees her face, he’ll see the giant bruise blossoming over her eye. 

“Spencer, please. Would you please look at me?” She sounds angry, which is just... wow. As if she has any right to be.

“No,” he loosens his tie, glowering at the wall. 

“You’re acting like a child throwing a tantrum,” she mutters, and _that_ gets a reaction from him.

“ _I’m_ the one acting like a child? You threw yourself into the line of fire just to prove a point!” He swivels to face her, and he’s sure he must look crazed because her eyes widen with something that mirrors fear. “I thought you were going to die! I thought he was going to cut you, right in front of us! Hotch told you not to do it!”

“He didn’t hurt me,” she says weakly. “I’m _fine_. I’m here, and I’m alive, and you know what? You’re not the boss of me! You can’t control every little fucking thing that I do just because you’re scared of something going wrong!” Apparently she’d lost her fear.

“Oh,” he chuckles darkly, reaching up to catch her chin. He traces his fingers across the bandage at the base of her skull, and then over the black eye. “He didn’t hurt you, huh?”

She jerks away from his touch, crossing her arms tightly. “They’re nothing. They don’t even hurt.” She looks angry, and defensive. “I did what I needed to do to protect anyone else from getting killed.”

“And who’s protecting you when you go off the rails like that?” He’s fuming, and still half-crazed, but he’s _so_ in love with her. 

“I can protect myself, Spencer,” she hisses. “I don’t need a knight in fucking armor.”

“But you obviously do if you’re going to come back looking like... that,” he gestures to her wounds again. 

“Do they really look that bad?” She asks, reaching up to touch her face.

“Oh my god,” he murmurs, rubbing a hand across his face. “You have no idea how hard it was watching him press that knife to your throat. I though I was going to lose you.”

“Okay, but you _didn’t_.”

“Please,” he says, voice hoarse from arguing. “Please don’t do anything like that again. Not without backup.”

She grabs his hand, which has been hanging limply by his side. “I won’t, Spence.”

He startles her by reaching out and pulling her to him, holding her so tight that neither of them can breathe, but he never wants to let go. 

“Thank you,” he mutters, pressing his chin to her shoulder, feeling small in her arms. “I love you.” It just slips out.

Her hands curl into his shirt, pulling herself impossibly close to him. 

“You mean like in a friend way, right?” She asks, voice muffled. 

“No,” he says, and it feels like he’s past the point of no return. “I mean it in a ‘I’m so in love with you, I finally know what all the poets were talking about’ kind of way. I _love_ you.”

It feels so good, just to get it all out. He almost doesn’t care if she doesn’t feel the same way. 

“You don’t have to say anything in response,” he says, and he means it. He’s prepared himself for rejection before.

She pulls away from him, looking wary and almost frightened. Then, she curls into herself, eliciting a sudden, shaky sob.

He gapes. He hadn’t prepared for this. Is the idea of his love so bad she has to cry over it? “I take it back,” he blurts out, in a desperate attempt to undo the past few minutes. “I didn’t mean it.”

“What the fuck, Spencer?” She asks, a little hysterically. She rushes towards him again, throwing her arms around his neck. He’s not complaining, but he’s even more confused than before. 

“I’m a little lost here.”

“I’m sorry,” she cries into his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to break down on you.” 

“It’s alright,” he says automatically, and he means it. 

“It’s just been a really long day, and what you said was a lot, you know?” She loosens her grip around his neck, and turns to press a kiss to his jaw. He has a feeling he won’t be able to say anything after that, and his eyes drift shut. “I love you, too.”

He stiffens under her touch. “You don’t have to say it just because I did.”

“I’m not saying it just because you did. I’m saying it because I’m in love with you. Even though you were an asshole about everything.”

“I wasn’t an asshole,” he says, exasperated. “I was worried out of my mind. I thought I was going to have a heart attack.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “But you yelled at me, when all I wanted was a hug, and I was so pissed! I was going to rip you a new one until it hit me: you were yelling at me because you love me and I realized how hard it would have been on you had things gone wrong, and it all just kind of overwhelmed me, and-”

He cuts her off. He has to.

He kisses her. 

She tastes like coffee and tears and it’s somehow the best thing he’s ever tasted. Her hand slides to tangle in his hair, and when her nails scratch lightly against the nape of his neck, he can’t help the shudder that wracks his body. She must feel his desperation, because she gasps into his mouth, deepening the kiss and pressing tighter against him. 

They fit perfectly together, and the need to feel her skin on his has him breaking away long enough to tug at the hem of her shirt. He hesitates, giving her the chance to pull away, but she reaches down, peeling the shirt off before reaching for his. 

She’s emitting an incredible warmth against him when they’re both bare chested and all it takes is a strangled “Spence,” from her before he’s tripping backwards to press her against the wall. His pressing open-mouthed kisses against her collarbones, his fingers closing over the zipper of her skirt, when-

“Oh, shit!”

They jump apart, she squeals and hides behind Spencer’s figure.

“Derek,” she mutters, horrified. 

Spencer leans down, grabbing his shirt and handing it to her to put on. She does, buttoning it halfway, enough to be covered. 

“Right,” Morgan says, scratching awkwardly behind his head. “Hotch sent me to find you. Wheels up in thirty.” He takes a step backward, eyeing them. “I’m glad you guys finally figured it out.” 

When he’s gone, she gives the shirt back to Spencer, finding her own. 

“Are we okay?”

“I think we’re good,” she says looking up at him, pupils blown wide. “Right?”

“Absolutely.”

They have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when the team gets wind of what Morgan walked in on, but it’s worth it. 

He brings her coffee on the jet, and tells her he loves her. 

She doesn’t cry this time.


End file.
